Rabbits: More than floppy ears

My fam­ily has raised rab­bits now for over 20 years, and I am often asked, “why?”
I love them — that is why — there is no other rea­son other than that.
Over the years I have had many dif­fer­ent breeds, like New Zealands, Har­le­quins, Flem­ish Giants, Nether­land Dwarfs, Cin­na­mons, Cal­i­for­ni­ans, Check­ered Giants, Dutch, Eng­lish Spot, and Mini Rexes.
Rab­bits are for the most part gen­tle ani­mals, (although you will come across a mean one every once in a while,) are very easy to take care of, and are easy to train. (Yes, there is some train­ing involved with cer­tain breeds.)
When you ini­tially see a rab­bit, the first thing that comes to mind is a cute pet, the Cad­bury bunny, or the Easter bunny.
How­ever they are more than pets. For some they are a busi­ness.
The rab­bit busi­ness has been grow­ing steadily over the years, and con­tin­ues to do so. Peo­ple get into rab­bits because one can have them basi­cally any­where: a garage, house (if you wish), barn, and in the city.
Rab­bits are seri­ous busi­ness. Most peo­ple laugh at me when I tell them this, but it is true.
In Pre­ble County, there are many youth involved with rab­bits through the 4-H pro­gram, and these chil­dren become extremely com­pet­i­tive in the show­man­ship aspect, which in turn has made them bet­ter breed­ers.
But what really attracts peo­ple to rab­bits?
Rab­bits are very inter­est­ing ani­mals.
Yes, most of the time they are found in their cages just sit­ting there, but there are so many things about rab­bits – like their nature and their breed char­ac­ter­is­tics — that make them fas­ci­nat­ing.
Myth: Rab­bits are rodents. Many peo­ple tend to asso­ciate rab­bits with the Roden­tia order, this is so because until 1912 they were. Rab­bits are actu­ally classed as Lago­mor­pha, a step above the Roden­tia.
Most peo­ple won­der what the dif­fer­ence is between the two. After some research­ing of the dif­fer­ences, I found that Lago­morphs dif­fer from the Roden­tia order because they have four incisors, and are strictly her­biv­o­rous, unlike the Roden­tia . How­ever, there are some sim­i­lar­i­ties in the two orders.
Rab­bits actu­ally have 28 teeth. They have upper and lower incisors which most peo­ple know of, where many would say there are only four teeth, total, in their mouths. How­ever, the rest of the teeth are in the back of their jaw.
Rab­bits’ teeth can grow at least a ½ inch in a month, but most peo­ple will not notice this because rab­bits like to chew, which helps grind their teeth down, pre­vent­ing den­tal prob­lems.
Rab­bits can see almost 360 degrees around them, yet they do have a blind spot in front of them and directly behind. A rab­bit blinks less than 12 times in an hour, and is highly sen­si­tive to bright light. If a rab­bit is left in direct sun­light, it can cause tem­po­rary to per­ma­nent blind­ness, and can even cause death.
Cur­rently there is research being done to deter­mine whether a rab­bit can see red, blue, and green. If you were to research rab­bits’ eyes, you would find most experts say that rab­bits see the world through a “grainy” pic­ture and some will also say that a rab­bit is color blind.
Humans use their nose for smelling and breath­ing — rab­bits do not.
If you watch a rabbit’s nose, you can pretty much tell how the rab­bit is feel­ing. The wig­gling of the nose is the indi­ca­tor. If a rabbit’s nose is mov­ing slowly, it means the rab­bit is calm. On the other hand, if a rabbit’s nose is mov­ing rapidly, it can mean a cou­ple of dif­fer­ent things. The ani­mal is either very inter­ested in what is going on, or it is agi­tated.
You can also look at a rabbit’s body posi­tion to help fig­ure out what its nose is telling you. The wig­gling nose can also stop, and if that is the case, it is a really good sign the rab­bit is about to flee. The next time you are around a rab­bit, watch its nose, it is pretty cool to see what hap­pens.
The domes­ti­cated rab­bits that are seen in most rab­bit breed­ers’ rab­bitries are from Euro­pean coun­tries, even though more than half the world’s pop­u­la­tion is found in North Amer­ica. Domes­ti­cated rab­bits should not breed with wild rab­bits, because the off-spring will be ster­ile. This is because the chro­mo­some num­bers are dif­fer­ent between the two species.
Hot weather is very dif­fi­cult for a rab­bit to tol­er­ate, how­ever they do han­dle cold weather pretty well as long as they are kept in an area free of drafts, and are kept dry. When the tem­per­a­ture out­side starts hit­ting around 80 degrees, it becomes harder on the rab­bits body, and increases the risk of the ani­mal hav­ing a heat stroke.
The best way I have found to keep rab­bits cool is just make sure they have plenty of water. Some rab­bit own­ers will place frozen water bot­tles in the rabbit’s cage, so the rab­bit can lay against it. Some peo­ple will take their rab­bits inside to the air con­di­tioner, I do not rec­om­mend this — you can actu­ally send a rab­bit it into shock and it can die from it.

Other facts about rabbits:

• Rab­bits can­not vomit
• A male rab­bit is a called a buck, and a female is referred to as a doe.
• Rab­bits can be lit­ter box trained.
• There are four dif­fer­ent types of rab­bit fur: satin, rex, wool, stan­dard or those referred to as “nor­mal”: fly­back, roll­back, and stand­ing .
• A rabbit’s ges­ta­tion period is 28–32 days, but nor­mally they deliver on day 30.
• A doe can have any­where from 1–14 babies per lit­ter.
• A baby rab­bit is referred to as a kit, and a group of kits is called a lit­ter.
• A group of rab­bits is called a war­ren.
• Rab­bit meat is all white meat.
• Rab­bits groom them­selves, although some breeds such as the wooled breeds do need to be groomed by hand.
• There are 47 dif­fer­ent rab­bit breeds rec­og­nized by the Amer­i­can Rab­bit Breed­ers Asso­ci­a­tion (ARBA).
• Rab­bits are to never be picked by their ears; it is very painful to them. Rab­bits actu­ally get car­ried like a foot­ball, with their head tucked near the person’s elbow, mak­ing them feel safe and secure.
Over­all, all ani­mals are very inter­est­ing crea­tures, each with their own unique facts. To find more infor­ma­tion about rab­bits, visit the Amer­i­can Rab­bits Breed­ers Asso­ci­a­tion web­site, www.arba.net, or to find out more local infor­ma­tion, visit the Ohio State Rab­bit Breed­ers Asso­ci­a­tion web­site, www.osrba.net.
Next month, look for “Pigs are Pretty” in honor of the upcom­ing Pork Fes­ti­val, when I will write about pigs, absolutely fas­ci­nat­ing animals.

Posted by Ashley Fritz on Aug 7 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.